Link building is a tough and time-consuming process that does not show results for weeks or months. That is why a link building campaign is a long-term affair that you should plan out. Just as with any campaign, it is important to have a strategy in place and review it at the end of each cycle. The ideal time to conduct a review and plan out a strategy for the year ahead is at the end of the year when companies shut down for the holidays.

The first step is to conduct an SEO audit of the site. The audit might explain why additional links have not had the expected effect. An audit will also show up technical issues such as broken links and crawling problems. A proper audit will also surface any content gaps that you can exploit in the next cycle.

The next is to review the current strategy and source of links. We need to know if the current strategy is working. The relevance of links is important. There is no point getting lots of links from sites that Google considers to be outside the category. Also, look at any tactics and methods that did not work and find out why.

Finally, do a competitor analysis. Ideally, you should have an analysis of the competition from the previous year for comparison. How has the competition grown? Have we outperformed them in traffic and links?

These three steps provide the foundation you need to build your next link building campaign.